as a christian, i believe that christianity has a really long tradition, so i certainly do not think it is not possible for god to heal people. dukenday night on "q&a," divinity professor and scholar discusses "everything happens for a reason: and other lies i have loved." >> there is no pain in your summit, right? that is real. her, and hiss to confidence in himself as that havele, and she did not pain in that moment that she and the veryels, dramatic approach to faith healing is one i often found to be somewhat manipulative. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m.

eastern on c-span's "q&a." >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us now is james o'keefe, the founder and president of project veritas, and the author of "american ."avda: my fight for truth thanks for joining us today. guest: thinks for having me back. host: what is pravda? guest: "pravda" was the russian word for truth. believect veritas, we the american people do not necessarily know that everything like to. in the soviet union, they know they are being lied to. what we are trying to do is expose waste, fraud, and abuse all of the country with one of the greatest sources of this

that is the and media itself, and that takes us to the mainstream media, big tech companies like facebook, pressr,, and the american has more power than all three branches of government, so they need to behold to account just like any other organization should be held to account. host: what is your definition of a journalist? guest: i think that journalism to be so muchrued an identity and less so on activity. even in oklahoma city, the percentage of that amazing photograph of a firefighter baby in his arms, he wanted. right is. the bullet-- he won surprise. the was not -- the pulitzer prize. he was not a photojournalist. for lack of a better word, the

this sort ofated cartel where they are only allowed to tell stories. a lot of it is not just political. it is economic. major media corporations are unable or unwilling to go places that an intrepid citizen can go, as we document in the 2016 election, as we are reporting, in many ways, we were the only ones who could have gone and done it, and many of these major organizations were afraid, for various reasons, to do things we were doing. asit is as much an activity it is a protected identity. host: you consider yourself a journalist. guest: yes. institute haster described you as a conservative activist organization. do you agree with that characterization? guest: no. i do not. host: why not? fruitsif you look at our

of our work, we call it veritas, or cinéma verité, which is the latin word for truth. we capture people in their own words. like in the twitter investigation, twitter engine ear engineers on tape talking at shadowing online. words, it is to paint a portrait. we do not write words -- we capture other people in their own words. that is the closest thing to journalism. i think journalism is the first draft of history, as has been said. videos,ook at our they are capturing a series of events -- not our words, their words. they may say we deceptively edited or selectively edit the footage, and i say name the edit. name the actual place where we engage in any form of selective editing. if you look at the actual work itself and what we do, taking on powerful people and the result of our work, congressional defining some of resignations, reactions, by any measure, we

are journalists. i want to remind our viewers that we are joined by james o'keefe, the founder and president of project veritas, and also author of "america "american pravda: my fight for truth in the era of fake news." (202)icans can call guest 748-8001, democrats (202) 748-8000, and independents (202) 748-8002. i want to talk about the videos you shoot. acorn caretdeo on here is the decision between a project veritas reporter and an -- whilement reporter we use deception to gain access, we never to see the audience. setitional journalists who the record weather subject tells them may not deceive the deceive but they often

their audience. when they tilt questions to their subject to produce a desired result, the government deceive their audience." i am glad you highlighted that portion of the book. the problem with modern journalism is that in many ways, the most important ar paramount measure of journalism is to tell the truth of the american people. yes, we do go undercover, we do utilize deception to get to the source or the target. you just report what your source tells you, if you blindly pass along unsourced information, like when busey asks twitter? "do you shadow twitter buzz feed asks -- do you shadow feed?

they say they don't. in the 20th century, wallace, upton sinclair, or william went undercover as a generator janitor in a chicago hospital, all these people use deception. the reason they do that is because they only the most important thing is to tell the most important thing is to tell the truth to the masses. you have to question what you are told. you have to report off the record conversations. it has been done before, just never in medicinal agent of an age where media is so consolidated. ok, brian is on the line from michigan. you are on the line with james o'keefe. caller: thanks, james. quite an interesting conversation. i am going to talk to the white house press corps in particular.

i have done my own story on cnn, and i can to you whether it is jim acosta, tapper, dana bash, you can go on and on and on, none of them have a degree in print journalism. ar down onto be that, they all have -- anderson cooper especially -- they all have alliances with the democratic party, but they do not announce that to us. is in the white house press corps specifically, not what you are doing, sir, is that they should have a degree in french journalism and let the conflict go from that, the white house press corps, with a degree in print journalism, with their own broadcast news is that they get it right, so another words, they police themselves. host: i want to get james a

chance to respond to that idea. guest: should they have a degree in journalism? maybe they should not. i do not have a degree in journalism. i just sort of went out and did it and taught myself so i can tell stories. schoolsthat journalism have lost their way, and i think it goes back to water become a my history of reading, it goes back journalists started to pursue power instead of the truth. they view this as a means to gain power and gain interest. if you look at the old mucky muck muckrakers, that is not what journalism was about. it was about telling stories to administer reforms of institutions, like mental a silence, like schools, and suddenly it became every day, you were trying to get a new watergate. the perversion

happened. i think it is happening in journalism school, so i would actually encourage people instead of going to journalism school, go out and do the work. host: how is project veritas funded? cest: we are a charity, a 503 organization. we expose waste, fraud, and abuse in different organizations. we are not for sale. we are crowd source funded, so nobody has any editorial influence over what we do or what we choose to do. host: jaclyn is on our democratic line from philadelphia. good morning. caller: good morning. i was reading some articles about mr. o'keefe and how he, you know, attempts to get people to, you know, tell what he thinks is the truth, but they said they bribe him with --ohol, you know, engage asks if they are antiabortion

activists, i mean, it is not true, what he does. it is just a bunch of crap. host: i want to let you respond to that. guest: what we do is true, and every time we report something, not only is it true, but it is often these subjects have admitted that they said what they said. they have admitted that they make the mistakes, and they keep resigning. why would they keep resigning is what we report is not sure? i would happily go to court and testify that what we report is factually correct, as would many of the subjects that we covertly film. nowcorker is suing us right not because he did not say what he said. because we are affecting the organization because of what you said. i think -- i did not make the statement. he made a statement. he was the head of the nazi partners, hired by hillary clinton and the dnc to do various things, and one of the

major investigations was on the election and how they were they did violence on the ground here he is suing us for more than $1 million. but in none of these cases do they actually confessed that they did not say these things. none of them actually pointed out to me where the stuff was edited. host: if you can recall another story that involves project veritas during the alabama u.s. senatorial race when project veritas told the "washington post" a story that a person who claimed had been impregnated by a candidate for more was coming forward, explain what happened there and your reaction to the response to the. guest: yes, we pretended to be a source to meet with the "washington post" in order to draw them out to an honest conversation. we had done stories on cnn where the russia story was all bs, is what the guy said, his words,

not mine. we get a story on the "new york times" where nick dudek said they were not deceptive. rich comey, the executive editor, respondent. we were doing stories on the media, and we decided to do the "washington post. we could capture a few national security advisers who said" he was amazed to work at a place with an op-ed page, which is what he characterized as extreme and out of touch of that spirit in the course of this investigation, we pretended to be a lot of different things. most of the time, you do not hear about the aliases we use. it is not a controversy if put in thisroper context or case, we posed a vindictive in order to have a meeting. it was only to get a meeting. we never intended to plant a fake story. that was never our intention. but it was misconstrued, and people assigned false motives to us about what we were trying to

do. again, the context is, we pose as telephone workers, terrorists, temps, drug dealer, often times to obtain the meeting. in the terms of the newspaper, to expose their corruption, the only meeting was to pose as a fitting the -- as a rape victim. host: our next call is from des moines, iowa. caller: hello, mr. o'keefe. i love your work. i'm used to seeing you on" wars and other outlets. question is -- i know google is coming after conservatives, libertarians. i want to hear your take on that. i know they're going after mr. jones lately as well as fox news other mainstream media outlets. i will respond.

keep up the good work, man. guest: thank you. i do not think they will ever break up google. i think reforms happen when you build a sort and moral consensus around issues. best way to institute reform is through exposure and education. i think if people had any idea what is actually happening in places like the irs, or maybe even the doj, or silicon valley titans, when people start to see these things -- and it is not just words. i think images transfix in the way that words do not. the only way to get the video is to go undercover. i cannot figure out any other way. twitter, hundreds of engineers read your private text messages or direct messages. on ther righteous people right and the left, probably more so on the left. panel with james damore at cpac yesterday, and when he is fired for writing a memo about intellectual

diversity, i think it raises people's eyebrows. the solution to the problem is not to lobby for solution security solutions to the problem is to expose what is happening. and the solution is sort of manifest. that is what we do far different than media companies. we spent time lobbying, opining with conjecture. i believe the solution is facts. host: barbara is on our republican line from new jersey. you are on with james o'keefe. caller: hi. i appreciate your videos, and i thank you for showing people speaking horse, that for some people are in the administration, who i had supported, had been shown on the video to say things that they deny in their words, so i thank you for the. -- that. toase keep up the good work answer who, what, why, where, and how, the questions that

journalists use to answer. they are not saying what used to be said with certain people in the administration. i am sorry, i am getting nervous. host: that is all right. who, what, where, when, why, we will keep doing it. host: there he is calling on the democratic line from baton rouge, louisiana. hi, barry. caller: hello. the guests's position seems to be that everybody lies, we are dishonest about our lying. actually, that everybody is lying. --does do not like what you just do not like what people who disagree with you have to say. c-spanally surprised would get this pathologically lying scu guest. m as -- scum as a guest. respond to your

use deception in order to gain access to people to draw them out, to get them to tell the truth. historically, you look at undercover reporters of the 20th century, talking about people prize, theypulitzer make thi statements, that you to see that order not to be deceived. they have to draw them out. where is the virtue in passing along untrue information to the masses? is often the resource, and it can be fostered that is real deception. when you deceive millions of people with information that is not itself through, when you ask a twitter spokesperson on the record, do you do this, and they say no we don't, when they do, that is unethical. i would argue that is far more unethical than us wearing a disguise in order to covertly film a government worker. we have to wear disguises in order to covertly film

government workers when government does not tell the truth at the podium, when government uses media as a platform for propaganda. we have no choice. don't take my word for it. go back and read about william gaines and the "chicago sun-times," which purchased a bar and posed as bartenders, far more deceptive, more elaborate deception, then anything i have ever done. they posed as bar member for ter months and covertly photographed . it is an in-means analysis. if you do not likely we are going after them of course you will not like our technique. it is not about extracting, it is about whose side you receive a student on, and at the end of the day, all that matters is telling the truth to the masses, and that is what we are about. host: one of your most-watched adeos shows you have u.s.-mexico border talking about a lack of border control. let's take a look at that.

[video clip] james: i am james o'keefe at the united states-mexico border of your i see no security. thousands of people have stood in my footsteps right now, coming from south america, honduras, and they have all crossed the border. if they can cross that anybody can cross. -- doere today to ask you you feel safe? ♪ what point you're

trying to make with that video, with the disguise and mask that you had on. what were you trying to get across? guest: our leaders tell us the border is secure, and initially we were going to cross without any mask, but then we thought -- let's do it in a sort of garish may be ato prove terrorist across the border -- what is the extreme example? we often times caricature these things too outrageous extremes to show how easy it was too evade border security. i walked through the desert on the way to interstate 10, and no one asked any questions. is over leaders are telling us the border is secure, whether you are pro-immigration or anti-immigration, just do not lie to us. our leaders should not lie to us. harry reid should not tell us our border is secure. we were demonstrating, almost ridiculously so, how easy it was to evade border security. he grilledring where

dhs, the department about it, and said -- do something like that concern you>? an answerse was not but to retaliate against me. detained multiple kinds him and they said because we were an amateur organization stuntd in publicity spirit when people are there is, they come after us. jameswe're joined by o'keefe, author of "american pravda: my fight for truth in the era of fake news." our next call is on the independent line. caller: good morning, ma'am. i appreciate you talking about this subject. sir, the only media that is true that i watched constantly

cnn ---- i mean, not see i watch cnn, but c-span. c-span is the most open and nonbiased. i look at the news media as fair and balanced. got them in order. you're talking about the media, but what about the people that -- the commercials, the people for the newsmoney media to come on and present themselves. until you find out who is backing the media with the money and the commercials, the most one that i have seen so far is the drug people. the drug people of some of the news media's, when they take a break, you see all kinds of drugs and all kinds of things going on with the media, so it is not so much that the media is

crooked, to me, i want you to explain to me how the people that is backing them, that is the problem. i feel like you should have commercial free news. host: all right, i want to give james and chance to respond. guest: i think that is a very profound point. i think it was sure he read who attacked us for soliciting and making money. te do not have advertisers a project veritas. journalistsked by for sending emails fell 80,000 fans asking for five dollars contributions. abc news, i do not mean to single out nbc news, but people cut to a commercial break the pharmaceutical companies and everything else. many media companies are impacted by advertisers. tradede publicly corporations who oftentimes are regulated by the government, and they are regulated by the incoming presidential

administration, who has voted to take away their broadcast licenses, some of which have influenced their editorial content, some of which makes them afraid. book, andsky wrote a makes a similar argument. he is no conservative it i agree with a lot of what he says. investigative journalism historically never produced a product. most of them have what they call a loss leader. ,n order to do something good they made a lot of other cash through other programming, and i do not think there is any business model for investigative journalism, ergo we are a nonprofitable, charitable organization. it is wrong for media organizations to attack us to our $100,000 -- our 100,000 fans for money. questions about how the advertisers and the government influence what they

do, because i can tell you right now, no one tells me what to do. we do things and interest of the public. host: ok. from floridae line on our republican line. good morning, john. caller: how are you doing, james? good morning. guest: good morning. caller: i like what you guys do. i am tired of watching cnn, msnbc come all the mainstream media. i watch everything because everything is biased. jazeera, bbc, al and then i read, and i have research on the claims that are made. i think you're doing the job. the truth is important. piecei want to bring up a about a professor at columbia school of journalism who wrote ,fter an encounter with you,

warning journalists always to be prepared to be ambushed. combine that with everyone having a camera phone these days, we all need to be hyperaware that what we are seeing might be reported. do you have it in for journalists? guest: i have it in for journalists for doing something wrong if they are lying to the people, if they know they are lying to the people, if they are playing hard and loose with the facts. what is amazing to me is that the exposure of corruption is more of a problem than the corruption it elf. i do not understand that. -- itself. i do not understand that. there was an article that cannot about washington, d.c. where everyone has to look over their shoulders. they do not want to be exposed. i think they have lost their mission statement. it is all tainted. journalists to spend 90% of their time telling us what to believe.

we want him showing us facts. they have lost their way. i still say the media has a tremendous degree of power and influence, but i also believe the media as a reactive organization. they do not do a letter investigative work anymore. it is incumbent upon project veritas and others to go out and lead the wilderness and others, go out and do the work, and i guess we will do it, and they will report on what we are doing. don is on our line from baton rouge, louisiana. good morning. caller: good morning. james, you and several people mentioned fake news. i do not think that is a true statement because "fake" denotes to me that it could be an accident, ok? i like to refer to the mainstream media as lighting news. there is no accident.

mao-stalin news network, innocent is the sum clinton news -- msnbc, the clinton news network, cnn, there is no fake, no accident to it. and a perfect example of what you were talking about it while ago, here in baton rouge, lsu hired james carville, who such low creditors for years. professor him to be a , and i want to know how much money he is making and we need to get a refund for the state of louisiana. host: what do you think about that point? guest: one of the things i wrote about in the "american pravda,"

you mentioned carville in louisiana, you happy crime high school in arizona, and they awarded katie couric the cronkite award for asking sarah palin what newspapers that she reads. [laughs] guest: which is fine. more power to katie couric for asking the question. but it is amazing how flippant journalism has become. the quality of the journalists is inversely proportional to the schism he fights against or so the more ridiculous the subject and the investigation, the more flippant it has become. you have entrusted citizens out there, like allison mosk omar mateen, who spent nine months -- allison mosk, on my team, who someone who met with , whodent obama many times

foments about activity on the ground, and crickets from the media. with their heads, they say, thro okies in prison. anchorou have and a who asks "what newspaper do you read?" it is about truth of power in the digital age and the sort of moral courage. host: james o'keefe, founder and president of project veritas and author of "american pravda: my fight for truth in the era of fake news," thank you for joining us today. coming up next, we will be taking more of your calls. republicans can call (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. and independents, (202) 748-8002 . we will be right back. ♪ >> for nearly 20 years,

"in-depth" on booktv has featured the nation's best-known nonfiction writers for life conversations about their books. this year come as a special project, we are featuring best-selling fiction writers for our special project "in depth: fiction edition." a, whosewith jeff shaar was "gods and generals" made into a motion picture. during the program, we will be taking your phone calls, tweaks, and facebook messages. our special series "in depth: fiction edition" with author jeff shaara on booktv on c-span2. wednesday morning, we are live in santa n